It might just be a certain look given upon a misinterpreted statement; of what a child does before the perfidies of society begins to corrupt them; or just a burst of laughter upon an innocent comment meant to uplift from a serious incident. Whatever the circumstances, it is the “lighter moment” which often makes it all worthwhile, and allows for the difficulties of the context to remain endurable.

Life is hard enough: Of paying bills; of worrying about the future; of what will become of our children, our aging parents, and even of our very own future. It is as if we walk around with scowls etched upon our faces, not out of free will or choice, but because the difficulties themselves force it upon us. Then comes a lighter moment — a comment, a misstatement, an unintended act or spoken word which brings a smile upon an otherwise stern and impassive face.

We live for those moments. It is the pause between the serious content, the period before the next sentence and the break until the following chapter. But when even the lighter moments fail to curl the lips upward and the old joke no longer triggers a burst of laughter, then it becomes clear that life has become too serious even for the grumps who seemingly never enjoy life. Medical conditions can do that to a person — of draining life out of every last bit of goodness such that even the lighter moments no longer are lighter, but remain as heavy as the thousand-pound metaphor that weighs us down.

Although it may no longer show in modernity, it was the dominant methodology accepted as reflecting the Aristotelian belief that man is essentially a rational animal, and thus the general approach towards reaching conclusions should embrace the perspective that the criterion of truth is based upon not sensory, but intellectual and deductive foundations.

But if the thought process fails to utilize the formal laws governing deductive reasoning, and nobody reads Russell or Quine, anyway, what is the difference? Is it merely an appendage to the conclusion reached, by declaring, “That’s the only logical way to think about this!” – and if we add the exclamation point, state it with a clear and loud voice, does that make it so? What is the distinction to be made, from a valuation or validation viewpoint, between decisions and judgments rendered based upon empirical evidence, deductive or logical reasoning, a combination of both or all three, and the contrast as against an “emotional” basis for reaching conclusions?

If an individual engages in complex futures trading on the stock market, for example, and bases such transactional activities upon unscientific methodologies, is it not the success of the venture (i.e., a retrospective judgment on the matter) that will ultimately determine the success or failure of each approach?

Take the hypothetical of the following: Securities and futures trading can now be done with a laptop from home, and we have Jim, Nancy and Deborah, each of whom thinks that he or she constitutes the brilliance of Wall Street’s best and brightest (though none have had any prior experience but are engaged in vocations far and distant from anything to do with it).

Jim looks at the relevant newspaper quotations and likes the way the numbers coalesce, and makes the trade based upon that comforting sensory impression. Nancy, in a different state and unbeknownst to Jim, has been pouring over the numbers, calculating, looking at the history of past performances, and creates an algorithm founded upon a calculus of probabilities, and pushes that computer button to deplete one’s bank account based upon mathematical precision that approaches some semblance of certainty, but never quite. And Deborah, well, she possesses on this day a certain “instinctive” feeling about a particular futures trade, and proceeds entirely upon this emotional response. Of the three, whom do we consider as validated, worthy of following or respecting of methodologies?

If Deborah were to increase her portfolio by, say, 500%, and Jim merely breaks even but Nancy loses her proverbial shirt, would we dismiss it by thinking, “Ah, just pure luck”? On the other hand, if Jim were to make a nominal profit, Nancy were to obtain significant returns, and it was Deborah who lost everything, would it change our attitudes and confirm the notion that rationalism prevailed because it is the only valid approach to life’s complexities?

The acceptance of rationalism is inevitable for the rational animal; elevating it to a status where all other approaches are stifled, however, can ignore the spectrum of other dimensions just as valid in human life.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it may be that “rationality” cautions one to remain in the Federal or Postal job because of job security and financial stability.

But there are other considerations, as well, such as an instinctive will to survive; and when stifling rationalism quiets the voice of health’s call to safety, it may well be time to consider preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

If the world was merely one constant clatter, would we be able to stand the din of life? Just as existence needs nothingness in order to have the separation of meaningful discourse, and as sentences need grammatical pauses (except in the cases of Faulkner and Joyce, perhaps), so the soul requires silence in the face of difficulties uninterrupted.

Medical conditions create havoc in lives; at first, perhaps just an annoyance or a nuisance, and the natural inclination is to rely upon the past that we know, and how – in remembrance of youthful vigor and quick rebounding and recuperation by mere strength and steely reserve – we were always able to ignore the pain, get past the turmoil and move beyond the anxious feelings of panic and depressive symptoms. “It will pass,” we tell ourselves. But then the long-view sets in; it is not merely a passing season, nor even a brief interlude of a cold north wind.

Instead, like the clinging vine that keeps coming back despite digging and chopping at the base of its roots, the chronic nature of the medical condition tells us that, as the unwelcomed uncle or aunt who has no other home and stays with you “just for a little while”, you cannot get beyond the season of pain and the intercession of turmoil. It becomes a constancy, a persistence, a monotony of unsettled disquietude. It is as if the soul’s search for silence finds only a din of unending noises as you search behind door after door for a room where relief and quietude may long for a bit of peace.

Souls need silence; silence allows for the interruption from din and darkness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from the dual attacks brought on by a medical condition – of increasing workplace harassment as well as the loss of the soul’s quietude and peace – there comes a time when preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, becomes as necessary from a medical standpoint, as it is for the soul’s inner health.

Federal Disability Retirement is a means to an end – a recognition that the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to produce at the level of acceptability, and a tolerance for allowing that same Federal or Postal employee to “move on” so that a basic retirement annuity can be obtained, and yet remain productive for the future in the private sector, where the (now former) Federal or Postal employee may make up to 80% of what one’s former job currently pays, on top of the amount of Federal Disability Retirement annuity.

It is also the allowance and recognition of another important factor – that the soul’s need for silence is a necessary component in the midst of din and darkness.

In many questions, there are multiple sub-questions. Take, for example, the question: Why are you so tired? You may respond first by answering the unasked but implicit question by declaring: “But I am not tired”. That is not what the question asked. Such an answer is a response to the implied question within the question, of: “Are you tired?” To the question actually asked, the proper response might be: I stayed up late last night reading. The presumptive sub-question unstated and silent but implicit in the major question posited in duality of a contingent combination, is precisely what is often termed as “lawyerly”, and thus somehow deceitful, tricky and attempting to subvert by having the responder accept a non-explicit presumption of facts.

The classic example, of course, is the cross-examination query stated variously as: “When did you stop beating your wife?” Before an objection is launched, the unwary witness might respond, “I didn’t” – meaning (from the witness’ perspective) that he never beat his wife in the first place, when in fact such a response evokes a different meaning – that the individual never stopped beating his wife, and continues to do so up until the present. There is, in such a duality of question/sub-question combination, the presumptive prefatory inquiry, stated as: “Have you ever beaten your wife?”

It is, in many ways, the capacity and ability to dissect and recognize the need to bifurcate or even trifurcate linguistic bundles that require thought, reflection and insightful methodologies in order to help define existence as successful or otherwise challenging. Life is a tough road to forge; language opens the world by allowing for avenues and pathways of communication, but it also compels constructing obstacles that deflect and defeat the reality of Being surrounding us.

In the linear historicity of language and the explosion of thought, conceptual paradigms and communication inventories, the commingling of questions, the looseness of language and the careless ways in which thoughts are provoked, may lend itself to confusion, puzzlement and an inability to solve problems. That is, of course, the strength of argument impounded by the British Empiricists, and while their collective denial of any substantive issues inherent in philosophical problems is itself suspect, their contribution in attempting to identify peripheral, “non-substantive” issues arising from the imprecise usage of language, in contradistinction to central and essential conundrums, helps us all.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are preparing to formulate a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, a word to the wise: SF 3112A contains multiple implicit questions, and bifurcation – nay, trifurcation – is an important element to consider and resolve. Be cognizant of the implicit question – lest you answer the major question without considering the prefatory query. Standard Forms are replete with compound questions, and the unwary will inevitably fall into the trap of answering the question posed on the surface, and in so doing, admit to facts presumptively “hidden” in sub-questions unasked.

Preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application requires the effort of untangling such compounding and confounding queries; it is up to the unwary Federal or Postal employee to bifurcate and trifurcate such attempts, and to dissect, with precision of purpose, the questions unasked, and answer those which are both prefatory and sequential.

At what point does nascence become a maturity of device? Is it linear time, or merely to exist within a pendulum of boredom where thoughts have moved on to other matters? Youth, in general, is expected to engage in folly; but of nascent knowledge, where the appended concept of the latter connotes an established fact, a truism tested, and a hypothesis verified – but yet to be tested by time-worn principles and assimilated into the cauldron of society’s greater mixture of things working, defects allowable, and warts acknowledged as harmless.

For, newness itself should not be a basis for permanency of status, and as knowledge cannot be verified until tested, so nascent knowledge is the dangerous of all because it combines the defiance of dual categories: Because it is new, it has not yet been tested; because it is “knowledge” unassimilated within the paradigms of commensurability like tectonic plates shifting to see what fits and what cannot be accommodated, so the lack of verification makes it that much more suspect. Yet, we celebrate nascent knowledge “as if” the preceding announcement itself is as exciting as the introduction of a product advertised.

Don’t you miss those days of gangsters and badlands, when cell phones and close circuitry of images were missing, such that the detectives had to actually pursue the criminals? Now, much of criminal investigation is reviewing of forensic evidence, and avoidance of conviction entails attacking the science of DNA analysis and the credentials of scientific application.

We have allowed for leaps and bounds over pauses of reflection, and never can we expect someone to evaluate and analyze an innovation and declare, “No, it just isn’t going to fit into the greater paradigm of our society”. Why is that? Is it because all souls are up for sale, and anything and everything that is deemed “new” becomes by definition that which is desirable and acceptable? Or, is it merely a matter of economics, that the survival of a company or product is based upon the announcement of a more recent version, and vintage of merchandise is left for those with nostalgic tendencies, old fogies who lack the vibrancy of youth and the cult of newness? That is, of course, where law and society clash; for, in law, the reliance upon constancy and precedent of legal opinions weigh heavily upon the judgment of current and future cases.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who needs to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the acceptance of nascent knowledge should include the medical condition, the current circumstances, and the present impact upon the Federal or Postal employee’s job elements. But as to nascent knowledge involving cases past and statutory interpretations of yore?

Those are the very basis upon which law operates, and for which nascent knowledge is anything but a folly untried and unintended for future use.

Posted on September 30, 2016 by Federal Disability Retirement Attorney

The advantage of nothingness over the clutter of everything is that the former – despite lacking any characteristic of anything concrete, or perhaps because of it – retains and reflects an aura of perfection. It is perhaps a puzzle to consider perfection in that which represents vacuity, but think about it: It is the figment and filament of negation which can represent the penultimate artifice of unsullied brightness; everything that is in being, can be found fault with, but nothing that exists cannot be prosecuted for imperfection.

That is why Anselm’s Ontological Argument for God’s existence is so deliciously irrelevant: lacking any “real-world” content, the irrefutable perfection of its linguistic construct allows us to believe with such irredeemable faith in the a priori nature untouched and unable to be deconstructed in a world where everything is otherwise unmasked as either superficial, virtual or unreal.

The prefatory acceptance of the major premise – “That than which nothing greater can be thought of” – is itself of such irrelevant tripe (the substantive reference to the content, not the animal’s innards) that we involuntarily warm our hands and lick our lips before pouncing with predatory glee upon such sophomoric tropes (easy to exchange the “i” for an “o”). And then we turn to our projects, as Heidegger would describe, in order to forget the unmasked and unveiled reality of our present concerns, because procrastination is the epitome of acknowledging our unmanageable souls and lives of decrepit conduct unlike the angels of yore.

There is nothing but imagination to feed our tired souls, anymore. This isn’t even a “postmodern” world; instead, it is a “post-cynical” world. We have unmasked every hero, dissected anything of value, and demeaned all content and reduced it all to mere materialism. The only thing left for us to elevate to a heightened sense of ecstasy is nothingness itself. Only if it survives in the corridors of our own minds and creative imaginations, can it be considered perfection. For, in the real world, nothing that is of value can be trusted, and everything else remains but nothingness.

That is why, for the Federal or Postal employee who continues to procrastinate his or her Federal Disability Retirement filing, the perfection of nothingness often remains as the final hint of hope. For, so long as one never tries, one can never fail. Perfection in the security of not, is the epitome of safety. By failing to file and remaining miserable in the pain and agony of one’s medical condition, the hope of future filing remains as the hint of hope for the future. But the problem with such an approach – as with Anselm’s argument for the existence of God – is that we live in a world of real pain, real deterioration, and real destiny.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application by the Federal or Postal employee requires a “next step” forward in order to move beyond the perfection of nothingness.

In the trite parlance of ongoing modernity, there is never anything gained if nothing is attempted, but for the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the agony of continuing in a job which is self-destructive, is by its very nature an admission that perfecting that artifice of nothingness is nothing more than delaying the reality of an uncertain future where the perfection of nothingness will gain nothing more than the reality of nothingness, which is nothing to hope for.

Seven False Myths about OPM Disability Retirement

1) I have to be totally disabled to get Postal or Federal disability retirement.
False: You are eligible for disability retirement so long as you are unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of your job. Thus, it is a much lower standard of disability.

2) My injury or illness has to be job-related.
False: You can get disability even if your condition is not work related. If your medical condition impacts your ability to perform any of the core elements of your job, you are eligible, regardless of how or where your condition occurred.

3) I have to quit my federal job first to get disability.
False: In most cases, you can apply while continuing to work at your present job, to the extent you are able.

4) I can't get disability if I suffer from a mental or nervous condition.
False: If your condition affects your job performance, you can still qualify. Psychiatric conditions are treated no differently from physical conditions.

5) Disability retirement is approved by DOL Workers Comp.
False: It's the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) the federal agency that administers and approves disability for employees at the US Postal Service or other federal agencies.

6) I can wait for OPM disability retirement for many years after separation.
False: You only have one year from the date of separation from service - otherwise, you lose your right forever.

7) If I get disability retirement, I won't be able to apply for Scheduled Award (SA).
False: You can get a Scheduled Award under the rules of OWCP even after you get approved for OPM disability retirement.